DARPA, the agency that really did invent the Internet, is now looking at ways the Web might be used to fight the next war.

DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a Pentagon office that researches everything from cutting-edge cybersecurity to hypersonic airplanes.

The agency's director, Regina Dugan, told a gathering of cybersecurity experts Monday that "DARPA will focus an increasing portion of our cyber research on the investigation of offensive capabilities to address military specific needs."FULL POST

A terror suspect will emerge from the shadows after nine years of detention this week when he’s led into a military courtroom at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri’s was captured in 2002 and has remained virtually invisible since then, detained first overseas in secret facilities and then at Guantanamo.

The United States claims he is the brains behind the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, which killed 17 U.S. Navy sailors, wounded dozens more and left the warship crippled in the harbor of Aden, Yemen.FULL POST

The International Atomic Energy Agency is scheduled to release a report this week that is expected to say Iran has mastered the steps necessary to design and construct a nuclear weapon. Jill Dougherty looks into what the report is expected to say, and spoke with an expert on Iran's nuclear program about the upcoming report.

Editor’s note: This analysis is part of Security Clearance blog’s “Debate Preps” series. On November 22, CNN, along with AEI and The Heritage Foundation, will host a Republican candidate debate focused on national security topics. In the run-up to the debate, Security Clearance asked both the sponsoring conservative think tanks to look at the key foreign policy issues and tell us what they want to hear candidates address.

The raid in May on Osama bin Laden's compound in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad has brought intense focus on Washington's policy toward Islamabad. Since then, the weight of informed opinion - in influential op-eds, think tank reports, and magazine articles - has coalesced around a consensus: the current policy has failed.

Ostensibly, since 2004 Pakistan has been a major non-NATO ally of the United States, a status it shares with such stalwart friends as Israel, Japan and Australia.

In 2009, the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, also known as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act, boosted aid to Pakistan by $1.5 billion a year through 2013. These blandishments were meant to encourage Islamabad to co-operate with Washington in fighting terrorism.

Though Pakistani authorities have at times helped round up wanted al Qaeda leaders from their soil, their overall record has been disappointing. Of particular concern to the US: continued Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network and other militants who regularly use safe havens in Pakistan to attack US troops in Afghanistan. FULL POST

It's a phrase Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seems to slip into with almost every comment about Iran these days: "I think Iran, unfortunately, is morphing into a military dictatorship."

That's how she put it in an interview on October 26, with BBC Persia. The expression appears to have first popped up during Clinton's February 2010, trip to the Middle East, where she said at a town hall appearance in Doha, Qatar, that U.N. sanctions are aimed at "enterprises controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, which we believe is, in effect, supplanting the government of Iran."

"We see that the government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament, is being supplanted, and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship."FULL POST

Editor’s note: This analysis is part of Security Clearance blog’s “Debate Preps” series. On November 22, CNN, along with AEI and The Heritage Foundation, will host a Republican candidate debate focused on national security topics. In the run-up to the debate, Security Clearance asked both the sponsoring conservative think tanks to look at the key foreign policy issues and tell us what they want to hear candidates address.

What do we need to achieve in Afghanistan in order to protect the security of the United States and its allies?

That core question should shape any discussion of our strategy in Afghanistan or the resources we devote to executing it. But that question is too often obscured.

Many say that pursuing any kind of “success” in Afghanistan, the supposed “graveyard of empires,” is sheer folly. Others say that is has become irrelevant, and that the death of Osama bin Laden has deprived the war in Afghanistan of continued meaning.

These facile assertions produce more palatable answers, but do not answer the core question. Presidents and candidates for president owe
Americans a clear and cogent answer, at least, as well as an explanation for how their proposed strategy that they lay out will accomplish the requirements for American security. FULL POST

Without question, the public's attention in the race for the White House has centered on the economy and domestic issues. It’s a sign of how things have changed since the start of these post-September 11th times. In 2004 and 2008, a good portion of the discussion focused on keeping American safe and foreign policy. But things began to shift as the 2008 election was wrapping up and the economy was hurting.

Now there is no question the campaign talk has moved from 9/11 to 9-9-9 (and other economic plans). A fact not lost on the Republican candidates who spend little time talking about national security issues. Debate after debate, interview after interview, domestic issues have dominated the campaign so far. Until now.

In the run-up to the debate, Security Clearance asked both the sponsoring conservative think tanks to look at the key foreign policy issues and tell us what they want to hear candidates address. From Afghanistan toIraq,ChinatoSyria, cybersecurity to defense spending, the folks at Heritage Foundation and AEI will make sure you are fully prepped for the big debate.

The first in the series will publish today on Security Clearance. For more coverage of the campaign, don't forget to read CNN's Political Ticker and our political section on CNN.com.

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CNN's Security Clearance examines national and global security, terrorism and intelligence, as well as the economic, military, political and diplomatic effects of it around the globe, with contributions from CNN's national security team in Washington and CNN journalists around the world.